I just got a call from #GoDaddy. The rep said he noticed that I'd transferred my 60+ domains away... and wanted to know if I'd tell them why. I got to tell them that it was because of their #SOPA support, and that I couldn't in good conscience give my money to a tech company that would support legislation like that. I told him I was aware that they had reversed their position, but that their explicit support of it in the first place had cost them my confidence in them, as it is at the best viciously ignorant, and at worst, malicious. The rep was quite sincere in his apology to me, asked if there was anything they could do to win me back. He had a "We support IP protections, and now realize that support of SOPA is too broad" song-and-dance routine that probably came in from a PR memo today. I told him "no thanks", and that was that. I'm impressed by the customer service hustle, but it shows that this little incident really spooked them.

It really makes me wonder if GoDaddy will ever be able to win back the confidence of many who joined this boycott. Perhaps not.

Reader Comments

Leaving for good

I've only got 3 domains, and at the moment they're all registered with GoDaddy. I've also got an SSL certificate for one of the domains from them. I've already started the process of moving them, and plan to finalize the move by the 29th. Among my reasons for moving include their initial support of SOPA, as well as their half-hearted reversal, but the other main reason I'm leaving is because they continue to accept the domain transfers of domains seized by the ICE division of homeland security. In my opinion, if they're truly opposed to internet censorship then when the DOJ asks them to accept these transfers they would simply tell them no.

I've yet to kow someone who didn't have a horrible experience with GoDaddy. It really comes as no surprise to me, given what others have told me of their business practices, that they had the attitude they do concerning SOPA and ICE.

Re:

"I've yet to kow someone who didn't have a horrible experience with GoDaddy"

Now you have. I haven't had a single problem with them. When I used their hosting, they never gave me any problems. I use their DNS, no problems. Their support was nice and quick when I asked for them to add a MIME type. In fact, before this SOPA thing, I would have recommended them.

Now, I will also be moving my domain. Anyone have a suggestion of who I can go to?

Still Waiting

I've decided to wait until the 29th to transfer my domains. I inherited them from a guy who was "good with computers" and mostly stayed out of laziness. When the powers-that-be asked why I was switching I tried to explain to them about SOPA and they simply didn't care about GoDaddy's support, this is despite the fact that SOPA terrifies them. When I explained how sleazy GoDaddy is and showed some of their commercials, their conservative moral outrage took over. It's sad (at least to me), that that was the reason why I was given the okay to transfer the domains.

Re: Re: Still Waiting

I had completely forgotten about that one. Fortunately for us, the barrier to entry to be a registrar is still fairly low. If the market were like U.S. cellular or broadband we'd be pretty much screwed by every unethical business practice.

how Chris Heald should have responded

He should have stated that the only way to win back his trust would be to fire those involved in suggesting to the CEO support of PIPA/SOPA and fire those above said executive all the way up to the top, replacing them with executives that not only know how to run a online business but also don't support the copyright fascism proposals like PIPA and SOPA.

If you could cut out the cancer in your company via "organ transplant", then I would maybe consider trusting you again.

Re:

The Congresscritters. They keep getting paid to keep this on the table and moving forward for those willing to pay them to do it. The Tech Sector is late to the table with lobbyists and "contributions", so until they are paying as well as the Media Corps we will get more of the same.

GoDaddy might be the only ones spooked.

I moved five of my domains from GoDaddy last week when news of their SOPA support broke. The other two expire in January, and I'm just going to let them expire.

The sad thing is that this seems to be the only tangible instance where support of SOPA has lead to customers taking their business elsewhere. Box office grosses from Xmas weekend were still $125.5M, and the MPAA practically wrote this bill. There hasn't been any news of a mass exodus of Comcast subscribers, either, and... well, I didn't exactly boycott Monday Night Football last night.

Re: GoDaddy might be the only ones spooked.

It comes down to available alternatives. There are other Domain Name Providers that don't support SOPA. It's hard to find alternative blockbuster movie providers, Internet service Providers, or football providers.

Re: Re: GoDaddy might be the only ones spooked.

Re: GoDaddy might be the only ones spooked.

I suppose I could pay the early termination fine and quit Comcast, but I'm afraid that my only other choice in this area is AT&T, and I quit them once already because their service sucked donkey dick the entire year I had it.

I suppose I could invest in a pair of tin cans and a ball of twine but otherwise it's dial-up for me (and I'd still be buying my phone service from either AT&T or Comcast).

I realize I'm just one subscriber, but I'm sure I'm not the only one with such limited choices.

Re: Re: GoDaddy might be the only ones spooked.

Re: GoDaddy might be the only ones spooked.

It comes down to available alternatives. There are other Domain Name Providers that don't support SOPA. It's hard to find alternative blockbuster movie providers, Internet service Providers, or football providers.

Re: Re:

I gave up AT&T for Comcast. The service is better... when it works. Which I admit is most of the time, but I'm still puzzled by this regular 8:52 pm disconnection that started again this week after a 2 month hiatus. Every time I complain they send a tech to fiddle with the wires, or blame my router. Or both.

Re: Re: Re:

I had a similar experience a few years ago with having a regular prime time outage and tons of irregular outages. Yes it was super annoying but I called and complained every time it happened and ended up getting about a year and a half of free service out of them. Eventually I switched to AT&T though.

Re:

Because we wisely let them have monopolies in many areas, so it is have them or do without.
Loosing contact with the internet and multiple media sources leaves you adrift in a world where OTA "News" programs pimp themselves out offering "dating" subsites, If it bleeds it leads, if we don't cover it - it didn't happen. Want to learn more about the tax hike? Well we only had 15 seconds to cover that, but here is 2 minutes of a cute cat video that went "viral".

The corporations want what the corporations want, the people we elected are letting them have it.
I find fault with them just giving into whoever pays them enough money.
We all want change, but we are all so petty and worried someone else might "win" that we keep electing those people who keep us focused on "what is important" rather than admitting the country is completely screwed up, its no ones fault and the more time we spend assigning the blame the worse it gets.

GoDaddy should realize that it's not enough to just stop supporting something to win people back, politics can be a good example of this.

150 years ago believe it or not African Americans used to overwhelmingly support Republicans, and never Democrats. Republican president Lincoln freed the slaves after all. But eventually Republicans screwed up and overwhelmingly lost the African American vote.

A few things caused this to happen.
1) Republicans decided to go after the ultra conservative (and very racist back then) southern white conservative voters, then the democrats base of support.

2) In the 60's the Democrats decided to get serious about winning the African American vote, so Democrat Lyndon Johnson helped passed the civil rights act of 1964, knowing full well that he was turning Southern White Conservative voters against his party for at least a generation.

So if GoDaddy wants to get serious about getting their customers back then they need to do more then just revoke their support of SOPA. They need to do something that'll clearly anger the Pro-SOPA people in order to win support back from Anti-SOPA people. Something like arguing the OPEN act has similar problems to SOPA and encouraging people to oppose it and SOPA to would probably be helpful (I'm not sure if that's true or not though about the OPEN act, so they might need to think of something else).

Re:

Democrats decided to get serious about winning the African American vote

This is horribly incorrect. There was, essentially, no African American vote in 1964. Passing the Civil Rights Act was an incredibly brave move by LBJ that was done because it was the right thing to do, not because of any political gain.

CEO Parsons is an AssHat

Parsons is a creepy, goofy looking, scumbag that makes your skin crawl if you have a face-to-face conversation.

Not only does Parsons think SOPA is a good thing, he thinks killing elephants is a good thing too. www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXVH4OsfapI
(He claims the encroaching people need the space, so the elephants need to be killed to make room for the people).

there's a big difference between saying they no longer support SOPA and actually not supporting it. i am yet to see real evidence of that.
no business can afford to lose customers and i think, as stated above, they are simply trying to keep that going.
i am waiting to see what happens if SOPA is defeated, how the attitude changes when it is re-introduced with minor alterations, just to make people and companies think it is better than before. i hope it will still be seen by all as an atrocious Bill and never happens. those in Congress that backed it should lose all votes and be investigated to find out how they were going to benefit from giving that backing

Re: "avalanche"

Yet more sensationalism. What makes this an "avalanche" ? People are posting stats on how many domains have been transferred "away" but no one is posting how many have been ADDED. With however many million domains they have under their management, this is an insignificant "exodus" unless everyone magically stopped ADDING domains. As I said in another post, it's great that they got slapped. You people just sound desperate yourselves now bashing them using just the tiniest sliver of truth to push your cause.

"Desperately" ?

Ok, so, it was annoying that GoDaddy supported SOPA in its current form. Good on the "Internet" for slapping them! But the headline in this post is just absurdly sensationalist and obviously one sided bashing. "GoDaddy desperately reaching out.." What makes it "Desperate" ?! I'd call it good customer service that they are reaching out to their customers to fine tune their position and try to earn their business back. This is EXACTLY what any company should do!

Re: "Desperately" ?

But that's the problem, they're fine tuning a non-position which amounts to "we want it but not if it costs us too much business" all of which indicates that it is causing some pain to them.

It's likely it's the inexpensive plans that are joining up while the people talking about leaving are at the other end of the scale in the money GoDaddy gets from them.

And I don't know when the 50% off sales started but it's looking at the moment that they're practically giving the low end hosting away. If not "desperate" they seem to be trying to attract business as fast as they can. To make up for the high end sites transferring out?

(It might be coincidental because of the time of year, of course.)

Of course the number is incidental, to use your wording but we'll have to wait and see what happens as time moves on.

It appears that they've received the message but have they understood it? To read Mr Adelman they don't seem to understand it yet.

No surprise...

GoDaddy is now viewed as a "traitor"... and don't traitors usually get the "death penalty"? If their business dries up and they "die", isn't that to be expected by--and desirable to--those departing for more friendly environs? For those leaving, the refrain must be "GoDaddy, you're dead to me now."

Now... boycott Hollywood [et al movies and TV shows] in any way that will send money to their undeserving coffers. Let the entertainment industry dry up and fade away.

This was only a straw that broke the camels back. Trust me, there are and will be more. GoDaddy has been a child run amok with tons of our money for a very long time. And as of the 16th rates with them are going up again. Why? More stupid advertising? It was only this last issue that in their time demented minds, that they thought that they could do or say anything and be impervious to backlash. Which rightfully this time they got caught. About time. Just look at those god awful commercials that they/Bill Parsons thinks are cute and "worthy" of our money. If you have ever read or heard one of Parsons manifestos, you'll know.

In the early days GD was great. But see what money can do to a susceptible mind(less). This backlash should have happened a long time ago to steer the child in the right, non-abusive direction.

Lowering pricing and not spending it on those stupid commercials and Safaris could be a start. Their excuses over the years for raising pricing, when there are cheaper alternatives out there that say the increases are unnecessary, are just plain lies.